Wordless
by ClaviculaNoctis
Summary: The wolf-maiden and the dragon prince.  Lyanna/Rhaegar  Pre-Game of Thrones.


Kiss away the pain and leave me lonely

I'll never know if love's a lie

Ooh - being crazy in paradise is easy

Do you see the prisoners in my eyes?

They snuck behind the cloak of the night. Sheltered, one would think. Unwise, every poet would say. All the great tragedies had their beginnings rooted in these coal-black nights heavy with unborn rain.

He allowed himself one final glance at her shadowed face before they set off. The slightly curled brown tresses. The silky dark eyes. The tender lips as cold as snow, as desperate for warmth. He had never been one for paintings – they were just like a rabbling battle for him – but if he could picture her in his frame of mind she would surely look like… a harp. Nothing human did she stir in him, neither mortal nor divine. He, of course, felt guilty for his lack of any attraction or aversion towards her. She brought no change in him – like so many others hadn't – but he knew he was the one to blame. Why, he dared not ask.

- Will we reach the Tower by the next sunrise? – Lyanna asked, probably her own mind. Still, he felt obliged to answer, at least he could give her words if nothing else:

- If we hurry and don't rest until then.

She discarded his answer as she urged the horse past him.

''How incredibly human he is when he speaks'' – Lyanna murmured voicelessly. When she had seen his triumphant, staunt figure at the tournament, cape fluttering, hair flowing in a silver stream behind him – the classic heroic prince – she had suppressed all rationality. Her first reaction she thought, she wanted to be scorn. Yes, a hollow and dry scorn for this majestic dragon in human form. Yet he was not lofty, but dignified. Not callous, but apathetic. Not spoiled, but sombre.

And when, at the feast, he didn't shoot a single glance towards anyone in the room – especially his father – she felt the pricking of some well hidden womanish nature within her. She strided toward him after the lavish wine-feast and steady meals had been finished - when hardly anyone in the room was steady on their feet if they weren't already steady on the ground.

He looked at her once and she realised that he was probably looking more at the insistence of her glances. Then he stood up – a dragon risen from his safely guarded mental den – and guided her onto the narrow balcony. And he told her everything. Maybe because there were no eavesdropping stars woven in the twilight that – this, she corrected herself – evening. And she deemed his everything enough to leave her everything else behind. Her father would be worried sick, her brothers sick with fury, all the lords and the ladies – all those that didn't deserve their titles as lords and ladies – would be sickened with the jokes, gossip and rumours that this small event would cause.

When, at last, they were sneaking away in the castle hallways, she remembered she had forgotten someone. Her bethrothed, Robert, who was nowhere to be found though she never did lift a finger or a foot to try and find him. Then, through the lighted opening of a chamberdoor she saw her bethrothed bebedded and certainly not lonesome. This eased her guilt and she hurried to catch up with the fleeing prince.

And now this night was coming to an end. Lyanna gave up every thought of reconcilement with her thoughts and once more sped the horse to gain on Rhaegar's war steed.

Chattering hooves behind them broke their reveries. They thrust the horses to speed up while trying to make out the riders. There was no flag winding in the midnight breeze and the horsemen looked too browny, too inconspicuous to belong to any of the great lords. The Kingsguard were out of the question, Rhaegar had made his subtle preparations the day before. That left only one answer, probably the worst of them all – bandits, and a whole lot of them, too.

Their horses quickly gathered around the two, plunging out of the darkness as in a fairytale. Only there would be no fairies here, though surely tales would be spread. But they couldn't possibly end here. He was too close, too sure this time.

The prince drew his sword – sadly, no Valyrian steel – and falsely guided the two riders before him to the left. They somewhat obediently followed when he suddenly pulled the reins and forced the horse to draw a semi-circle, striking at the other three bandits to his right. One he got, the other two swiflty regroupped with the deceived ones. Rhaegar spared a glance at Lyanna, whose ethereal image rapidly dissolved his worries. She had drawn a shorter but no less deadlier dagger and had already struck two of her persecutors, one mortally wounded, the other soon to follow.

Again he returned his gaze to his now five opponents and gave himself an expression of loss. They took the bait and charged at him. At the same time he poked his horse making it go mad with rage and affliction. The wretched animal pranced and leapt, danced and frisked, throwing itself at the other beasts. Rhaegar kept his hold with one hand and both feet almost tied to the saddle, and with the other he swinged his sword with no real aim. The five bandits scattered – two were thrown off, the other three running into darkness. The prince abruptly finished the fallen ones then went on to deal with those near Lyanna – if she had let any live.

When he looked at her steady figure on the horse and the shifting decors of the gloom, he couldn't restrain a smile. Fortunate bandits those were, to die at the hands of a wild northern goddess.

A fairytale Tower. The Tower of Joy, as he had mentioned. Lyanna was truly beginning to detest fairytales.

Once inside, he left her to her own desires. And didn't return for three whole days. If he had been someone else, she would have given him a piece of her mind and a 'patting' of her sword. She wondered why she acted as if he wasn't indeed just someone else.

Then the third night let her curtains fall down on the Tower. And with the lightning of torches – the only guards of these woeful passages – he entered her chambers. Like a weary outlander stranded on the island of gods.

His fingers traced the lines of her skin, her dress having almost fallen off like angelic feathers. She let herself drown in his embrace but did not let her guard down. Her fingers in turn travelled through the strings of his tight jacket, untied them. He forced her gently on the vast bedstead and she lay there as in a dream. Only the dream was creeping up on her legs, tickling her sides, caressing her hair with gentle strokes as if lining the features of a painted face. She subduded her will and spread her body bare before him, unwinding the thread of her consciousness. It was better this way – her blank mind would erase any insolent memories in the days to come. Or would it only let the sensations pour in a raving river?

More like a river of molten lava. The fire, yes, that was its foul play – fire wasn't about honesty and truth, open passion or clear mind. It was just a world of drugging self-delusions.

They both gazed at the reflections of their souls drift away, cold and unwielding. They sent their unbending, lifeless hearts away on some dreamful journey with no dreams. Only their bodies remained, melting into each other, becoming each other. They could have gone on living with bodies alone till the end of their lives if only Time had ended. If only the dawn hadn't cleared her face in the fiery sky.

A cool crispness in the morning air. Classic. The riders had already set off – Rhaegar and two squires – so the horses' scent hadn't left any trace. This morning, despite being a southern one felt almost frozen – as if it was waiting for the sun to be born, to let out a flaming cry and shatter the ice in the air.

- M'lady.

Ser Oswell Whent was trying his best not to sound impolite or hasty but his voice clearly indicated just how much he hated such clear, cool mornings. Lyanna was too getting tired of the lonesome view of the road – the road leading to home – and gathered her wind-blown skirts. The steps of the tower, going upward into a spiral, reminded her of those foreign myths where some people – called sinners - went to a strange place named ''hell''. Only they went downwards.

Closely following behind her, she could hear ser Arthur Dayne – the Sword of the Morning – but she could tell that this too wasn't his preferred type of morning. She could almost taste in the wind sweeping around her his agitation and restlessness after being left behind way beyond the battlefield. Both of them clearly knew that however grand the scale of Robert's Rebellion, its echo would hardly reach these southern lands.

At the top of the stair-spiral a door swung open on its hinges as if it had been waiting until then for the signal of their weary footsteps. Ser Gerold Hightower peered out of it, ready to take her hand. Lyanna choke down a sigh, some heavy reassurance within her told her that the days ahead would repeat this simple scenario. Down and up, up and down. A Tower, a Sun and no sun in the tower.

The world was on fire. And this was no prophecy, prince Rhaegar thought.

Just a bloody blood-sappy battle soppy singers would relish remembering. Thus Myles Mooton, his squire, mused as if he had read his mind, amused at his own youngish sarcasm. He watched the prince drift into the stirring crowd, further away, closer to the bridge across the Trident.

What was he intending?

Then the young warrior saw the dark, horned shape of… a knight, a devil? Or, in other words, plain Roberth Baratheon.

It was not until an hour later that the view was clear enough for Myles to register the situation. The river had run red and atop the bridge stood one figure alone. And he was no dragon prince.

''Rubies flew like drops of blood from the chest of a dying prince, and he sank to his knees in the water and with his last breath murmured a woman's name...'' - a flame-eyed girl would see years later. And yet no one ever, not even his opponent, heard the name.

Only miles away, in a high-perched tower, a pale-faced woman woke up with a muted scream in her bed. The sun had sprawled itself onto her bedsheets and was setting her dark hair on fire. And she scolded the sun, and whispered to it, and prayed to it, and begged it to tell her, but it never uttered its secret.

The labour-pains started before midnight. And went on till the next moonrise. Exactly nine months had passed, four full of anticipation, five smeared with consternation to the point of apathy.

The fever was too strong to let her keep her mind clear. Or even sane at moments. She glimsped shards of relaity, the midwife who was also to be a future mother of the child, one or two of the knights striding near the door and then going out, and letting the sunlight in, and then shutting it hard, and then looming gloom, and then a whole ocean of dusk, and then she realised there was no water in it, only ice, dark-dyed ice. And then nothing again.

When a violent clash rang into her slumber. Metal against metal, willpower against willpower, man against man. She discerned the voices of the three warriors of the Kingsguard as clearly as she could. But the other men's – she could tell there were at least five more – remained a mystery to her. Besides, she had her own unfinished battle to fight and with a loud moan she recommenced her labour.

It was drawing to a close – both frays, that is – and Lyanna knew that if it were to continue beyond this point she would lose too much blood and too much consciousness to stay alive. Except for the sweet gore-laden air even she could make out, there was the faint, fragile scent of roses. The nearly crushed figurines of blue-rose petals she held onto in her balled little fists. If they could, they would surely have bled their rose blood away.

And then her blood would surely flow away, too.

Ned, yes, Ned had been standing a moment ago so close to her. And then they were both gone – her brother's sturdy yet hunched figure, holding in his trembling arms a delicate bundle. That shy little creature with a northern smile – almost a no-smile – that had looked at her with huge dark eyes. She thought that everyone who would be destined to meet the then fully-grown boy would see only a vast spreading abyss in those black eyes. Yet for her they seemed the most brightly lit, like moist and still dry lakes. Like the highest lakes of the northern mountains when the sun broke through the clouds and their icy cover and broke their watery mirrors into shiny pieces.

And then nothingness.

''You will know nothing, my child'' - she had whispered to it though the words may have only ebbed in her mind and receded behind her dried lips.

Ned had cried, the boy had not. She had not even left him a name. She had not lived to be called a mother. Or a lover.

And then, with her last word of reality, Lyanna realised what she had never ever said to him in all their moments of talk and hours of silence – love.


End file.
